Philip J. Currie

Philip J. Currie is a Canadian paleontologist, specializing in Cretaceous theropods and how they evolved into modern-day birds.

He was born in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. Having been inspired by a dinosaur toy in a cereal box in his childhood, he went on to study zoology at the University of Toronto, then later vertebrate paleontology at McGill University. After getting his PhD, he became the curator of the Earth Sciences department at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton.

Philip J. Currie is very influential in Canadian paleontology, perhaps being the most famous Canadian paleontologist. He was involved in a number of multinational paleontology expeditions, such as the Canada-China Dinosaur Project in the 1980s, and the Argentinian-Canadian Dinosaur Project in the early 2000s. He has been involved in the description of twenty-four dinosaurs.

He was influential in founding the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, Alberta, and the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum in Northern Alberta was named after him in 2015. He was one of the paleontologists that was used to model Alan Grant in Jurassic Park.

He is married to Eva B. Koppelhus, another Canadian paleontologist working for the University of Alberta.